Selections: Three Poems by Joseph Bathanti

Girl

After Sam Hamill’s Translation of Izumi Shikibu

Her long brown hair,

still a girl’s at that instant

of intake, a breath

she holds interminably –

because the black dog

gallops ecstatically

to her hand through

the winding creek bed,

a flopping speckled trout

in his mouth, the water

as he splashes going up

and up, excelsior,

balletic Sycamores

aswoon from their banks,

bark-shed, shameless –

and then that arrested

breath surrendered,

the lost last exhalation

of her girlhood. Barefoot,

she crosses the ancient plank

bridge spanning Linville Creek.

The give of the wood

at her tread echoes

through the gap.

Behold

The storm shakes

blood from the hemlocks,

then ceases

in paroxysms. Across

the shocked vale

shudders silence

in its wake. The sky

in a feat of grief

turns lavender

the gap. Behold:

the first haying’s golden

bales sprawl against

the mountain sole –

so bereft the drenched

crows weep.

April Snow

The grass whelp sin Biblical mien –

mowers spend themselves –

a writ of greenest green,

spangled in sunbursts,

as if Van Gogh lost himself

inthe remnant petrified thistle,

the first violets at his feet,

and painted Billings’ meadow.

Robins swagger the land with pomp.

Swifts, little crosses,

jet above them. Birdsong.

Frog-song. Early spring

by habit exaggerates itself

unconsciously like an exotic woman:

the green that is a blinding recognition.

To the ridge rise pines and firs.

Regally, in their time, bud ancient

hardwoods, swelling by the day

with their bringing forth.

Blackberry whip the swales,

its cane Shrove-purple from the long

winter. In Sugar Grove,

daffodils sway in the Little League outfield.

Bases bleach in the dirt.

Home plate is a pentagon.

It forgets nothing.

Life is more than fable,

but never stops stunning earth.

And so: hushed clouds, sheepish,

sheep-shaped, yet foretold,

slip over Snakeden Mountain.

Their shadows blanket the valley floor.

The snow they release is inevitable.

This is how we must think of it –

inevitable – how we must welcome it,

the white counterpane of silence,

beyond our ken, the green

beneath it jade, milky.